TJ Dumser – Six Missing : People Behind The Pedals

TJ Dumser Transcript

Simon

Okay, well, welcome to the podcast and today, we are privileged to have T.J. Dumser, who is a sound designer, an award-winning sound designer I should say, producer, musician, guitarist, synth player, many, many different things. So welcome.

TJ

Thank you so much for having me.

Simon

It’s an absolute delight. So much to talk about. Difficult to know where to start, but I guess perhaps we could start at the beginning. Sure.

TJ

Well, actually we could start at the end of your email that you sent to me, which said that you had a 67 SG, is that correct?

Simon

74 SG, yeah, that’s right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

TJ

Okay, awesome. I just a few weeks ago picked up a 69 SG.

Simon

 Very nice.

TJ

And it is, yes. And they’re just, they’re rock and roll machines really. They’re just built for being loud and I love them so much. I had my first SG in 2000 and been dreaming of having an actual vintage one my entire playing life and finally had the good fortune to get one.

Simon

Oh, fantastic. Yeah. This was one that I got from as a very young guy and it was all I could afford at the time and it’s very beaten up and is still very beaten up, but it’s just with me now. So, part of the family.

TJ

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think that the older they get, the more beat up they get, the more stories they have, the better they sound. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s just kind of. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess the beginning for me, it was guitar. So that’s kind of where I got started with all of this in a very, I would say classic story.

You know, I was foraging around in my grandparent’s attic and I found a box of records and I didn’t even really know what they were, but they were fascinating to me and they had these beautiful covers and they were big and they smelled weird. And the first one that I was really drawn to was Led Zeppelin II and I saw the cover of that, and I was just kind of mystified by how weird it was. Like there was a little bit of cheekiness to it, but also a seriousness and a mystery and a magic to it. I was really drawn into that and right behind it was Zoso. Led Zeppelin IV and so hearing a whole lot of love, hearing Black Dog, hearing Stairway to Heaven.

I was just hooked and then pairing that with my favourite movie being Back to the Future and having Marty McFly do Johnny Be Good. I was just like; I have to do this. I was like, I have to be that. I have to do that. And outside of the records in the attic was a 1964 Gretsch Clipper, which was my uncle’s. And he graciously gifted it to me and I had it in my possession. I still have it in my possession. It’s hanging on my wall over here now. And it’s an amazing piece of wood. It’s an amazing piece of craftsmanship. It’s from the original factory in Brooklyn, New York, handmade by human beings. You pick it up and it feels substantial. That’s where it all started for me was just guitars and sounds and loud rock and all of that.

Simon

So that obviously inspired you. You obviously knew at that point that that’s what it was going to be? I mean, during school studies and everything, was it all focused on actually playing or because I know you’re as much into the production and engineering side.

So I just wonder at what point that interest came in as well.

TJ

Yeah. So that all happened probably. I mean, I found these records in the guitars when I was in elementary school. So I was young, but I never really took a lesson. I never really started playing until I was about 10 or 11. So there was a gap of me just kind of like having this guitar and holding this guitar and miming things with this guitar, but never knowing how to do anything with it. And then when I got old enough to kind of show enough true interest in it enough for my parents to be convinced to pay for lessons that I wasn’t going to walk away from.

When that happened, it was just that became my sole focus. It was just music, music, music. How can I play more? How can I learn more? I’m overwhelmed by the amount of just the vastness that is music, which to this day still exists because of the Internet and now archives and things that you can dig into and how amazing it is to go onto YouTube and see an AC/DC concert from 1972 and be like, oh my gosh, this is just pure fun.

So yeah, through schooling, when I was in a junior, a junior in high school, that’s when I kind of decided I was going to do something with it. And so when all my friends were studying for the SATs that we have here and planning where they were going to college for the next four years, I had found a school in Florida that just offered an expedited program for recording arts.

It was 12 months long. It was a degree program. Six to seven days a week, 16 hours a day of classes. Wow. It was intense. It did count. Intent. Yeah, it was intense. It was a 24-hour clock. So we had classes at all hours of the day. Every month it would change.

So some months I was getting up at 1 a.m. and going to class until 4 a.m. And then again at 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and then taking a break. It was wild. But it afforded me the opportunity to get out into the working world as like a 20, 21-year-old.

So I started, I launched right into studios in Manhattan and just found it as a way to have income while I was doing music. And yeah, the rest is history, I guess, as they say.

Simon

Wow. It’s notoriously difficult to get into, especially straight out of education? So did they help you find work and find placements? Is that how it all worked?

TJ

That’s a great question.

I mean, the biggest thing I guess like most universities is that you hope that they have kind of connections in the real world that help you do things. And I think the connections that this school had was just kind of, you know, it was still early days internet, but they had a big kind of amalgamated list of studios as resources.

So I took that list, I printed it out, and I just marched around Manhattan with my resume, which was basically nothing at that time that said I was a camp counsellor at one point, and that I had an interest in music. And I just, I took it around to a bunch of different studios until I found one that said they needed help. And I just, they said, can you start now? And so I said, sure.

So I just stayed after the interview and that was kind of it. So I had the traditional trajectory. I took an internship of quite literally refilling pencil cups and making coffee and getting people’s lunch and going out and getting ice cream for clients and a lot of client services. But then, you know, in the down moments, finding ways to get in and watch the engineers and see how they interacted with people and how they really kind of ran a session. And, you know, years went by of just doing that very quietly. And then I got offered a job as an assistant. And then from the assistant role, you know, somebody called out sick and there was a session, and I said, I think I can do it. So I hopped in and that was like the last day that I was an assistant. And that was, you know, back in 2010 or something. So I’ve been doing this line of work for quite some time now.

Simon

Wow. That’s an amazing story. I mean, I was going to say lucky, but there’s obviously no luck about it. It’s just real hard graft, isn’t it!

TJ

That and timing, I’m sure, you know, it is. I think there is a healthy amount of luck and also determination. Just like with every success story that you hear in music or business or life, there is always, there’s no mystery to it sometimes. Like it just takes work and time equals success.

Simon

Sure. Sure thing. That’s fantastic. So during this period, were you in bands and playing live music or were you doing your own home studio at that point or kind of how did that all fit together?

TJ

Yeah. So when I was at school, the best thing that came out of it was that I got a student discount for Avid Pro Tools. So I got a copy of that. And so when we weren’t in class, we were recording and we were kind of learning a lot on our own and learning about production and learning about, you know, what works, what doesn’t work and just trial and error ourselves and in our, you know, dorms and stuff.

And then after that, I always had a little studio set up at home and I was always recording myself recording bands. And yes, I was in bands since I started playing guitar. And then when I was working in Manhattan and I had this job, I had kind of kept a couple of projects going, excuse me, on the side so that I could still fulfill myself creatively. And it was a huge benefit to work at a studio and be in a band because studio time was free.

And that’s, you know, one of the, a huge leg up that a band can have when they’re first starting out because studio time is not cheap, and engineers time is not cheap. And I don’t know about you, but like when I sit down, if I were to go into a studio and, you know, so to speak, that red light comes on and you get that like, okay, I got to perform. There’s like a, it sucks the creativity out of it a little bit, sucks the fun out of it.

And so having a studio at home was always a way for me to, you know, work out stuff and then bring it into the nicer gear and stuff. And slowly over time, as you can see now, it’s like, you know, the home studio evolves from the little table that became the couch, that became a desk that then became a handmade desk that became now this thing. So it grows and it goes and, yeah, it’s just so fun.

Simon

That’s great. When I was trying to do a bit of research, you know, I saw some of the performers that you were involved with, I just checked my notes here, I was looking at Deb Oh & the Cavaliers and also Sidesaddle.

They were very different musical genres from the more, well, from the work that you’re doing at the moment, which I’m sure will come on to. But I was just fascinated in terms of, was that a conscious decision or was it just people that you knew and who were around at the time?

TJ

Yes, both. Okay. So the project that was Sidesaddle was kind of a grouping of friends that I had since middle school. So, one of the other guitarists in the band was like the first person I ever started playing music with.

He was the one that we were playing AC/DC covers, Kiss covers, Metallica covers, you know, all that stuff in his garage with our amps that were far too loud to be playing the type of sub-par playing that we had. And so we just always kind of stayed in touch and we had always played together and the opportunity came to do something and it felt right to do it then.

And with Deb Oh and the Cavaliers, I met Deb when I was working at the studio that I was at. So it was kind of like, oh, you’re a singer, songwriter, piano player, like this is awesome. And she just so happened to be, you know, timing again, looking for a guitarist because theirs moved away. And I was like, I think I could do that.

Yeah. So it’s just a series of timing and saying yes to stuff and playing with friends and everything. Which then, yeah, the path is kind of traditional but also weird that brought me towards what I’m doing now, which is instrumental ambient kind of ambient guitar, like synth driven, modular synth stuff. But the gateway was really guitar effects. It was guitar pedals.

Simon

Okay. That’s really, really fascinating. Of course, then there’s the big bit of saying no and going into it all on your own or under your own brand.

TJ

Yeah. And I mean, even that is, it has its ups and its downs. When you play in a band, you have the opportunity to have an idea, be discussed and worked on and have other people’s input. And that has its value, but that also has its downfalls sometimes. You don’t always see eye to eye. And I guess you could say that in a lot of ways, the best idea survives, making the unit greater as a whole.

But I had been doing that since I was 10 or 11. And I got to this point where I was like, I think I just kind of want to do my own thing.

But now that I look back on the last like six, seven years of being a solo artist, I realized that a lot of the ways that I produce are with machines and workflows that almost mimic band members.

So, I work with delay pedals. So, like an idea gets sent out and then it comes back to you and you have a chance to hear that idea. And is that working? And hey, how can I play off of that? Same with a lot of modulation things, but also modular synths, generative types of sequencers and things that kind of act and function as bandmates to me. Like this is, I will give you input of an idea and you will synthesize it and send it back to me in a way that I didn’t necessarily intend or hear. But hey, this gives me this other idea. And now we’re off on this other path that I couldn’t have anticipated when I first started.

So, in a way, not to make it sound kind of lone wolf, sad, sassy, but in a way I am performing with these machines. And they are just as much a part of the process as a band member would be.

Simon

Sure. Sure. Now, I was looking at some of your videos last night, actually, some of the more recent ones and very enviously looking at the amount of pedals – I think you’ve got more than I have actually!

TJ

So, it’s a bit of a problem. I mean, it can get away from you for sure. And I think that even now, I haven’t purchased new pedals in a long, I’ll say a while. So, like a year or so.

There was a period of time where, yeah, there was a period of time where it was kind of like all new and fresh to me. And I was like having my mind blown every day that I was finding something new. And then that can be a bit of a trap where like you’re kind of researching and acquiring more than you’re actually producing and outputting.

So, I kind of got that in check and then started learning really just like the instrument, the pedals that I have. And one of the artists I really looked up to that it uses a lot of effects is Nels Klein from Wilco and Nels Klein 4 and all of that stuff. And I had saw a video of him talking about, you know, noise being part of his sound and the way that he treated his pedals and effects was almost like this big organism. And that’s how I see it too.

It’s like, I don’t have every pedal back there on its own individual loop and send everything functions as one pedal board. It is like the unit. So, it’s just this big kind of massive one effect unit that now having had it in this configuration for the past eight or so years, my fingers just know where everything is and it just feels very familiar and at home and kind of just an extension of my playing.

Simon

Okay. Are you able to remember the last pedal you bought out of interest?

TJ

Yeah. So, that one was actually quite recently because there’s been a lot, I feel like there’s, there are so many boutique creators and companies these days that are making supremely unique pedals. But I had been involved very in a very small way with the company Hologram Electronics.

They make most notably the Microcosm, Infinite Jets, Dream Sequence, Chroma Console. And I had helped out a little bit with the Microcosm, like beta testing those and kind of trying to break it type of stuff. With another guitarist, Mike Bagala, I think. And that was super fun and that ticked the box of like a new pedal for the last few years.

So, I hadn’t done anything new until I saw this pedal from Chase Bliss onward, which looked like a combination of a lot of different things. But one of the biggest ones is like, I have this pedal from Electro Harmonics called Freeze. It’s just dead simple. It has one foot switch and one dial. And it’s literally all it has on it, maybe a latch switch. But it infinitely sustains your note in such like an inorganic, organic way. And I love it. And I’ve had it for a long time. And I saw onward kind of did that thing plus more. So, I gifted that to myself, so to speak.

But how about yourself? Is there anything that’s been on your want list for a while?

Simon

Well, I’m a bit spoiled really, because I’m sort of surrounded by them, but I don’t actually get time to actually test them out. So, it’s kind of almost the opposite problem that you’ve had. But there are some great pedals which do the basics now.

I mean, one of the great problems that I’ve always had, and that’s how to get a sort of decent rock sound at really, really low volumes. And I’ve tried all sorts of things like Marshalls with power soaks and whatever, and spent fortunes, and it still doesn’t work.

And at the moment, I’ve just got this little Fender Champ clone. And there’s a lot of different pedals which do a great job at mimicking that type of thing, you know, the Cusack pedals, they do something which mimics the different Marshall genres, either the vintage or the modern ones and, you know, they’re not massively expensive.[Editors Note: This is the Meta Plexi]  And they just do a terrific job if you’ve got a sort of a nice clean, small, valve amp.

But listen, there’s a lot of them. But that was always the big problem for me. And that’s how to get that sort of classic sound without, you know, causing a domestic incident, basically. So, that’s a big deal for me.

TJ

Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of the curse of those types of things, like those, you know, Marshall Super Leads or Fender Super Reverb or something. I’ve really only ever been in a venue where I’ve been able to like open up a Fender Super Reverb. And with the four 12s inside of it, and get it to, you know, six or seven, which is where it really sings. Yes. Only been able to do that once. And I experienced that magic.

And I was like, Oh, wow, I get it. I get why people covet these things and why they are the way that they are. But damn, I mean, running around Manhattan, I needed a small amp. I needed something I could toss into a cab or throw in the subway and, you know, the clubs that you would play. If you walked in there with a Marshall half stack, I mean, you’d be they would, you’d never be allowed to be there. So, you know, right off camera there is my Deluxe Reverb. And that’s from 74, 75, I guess it’s kind of the Blackface mod the Silver Face there.

And I hear you though, like it’s funny, like you, you know, you buy and sell and trade pedals and gear and you can spend hours online just kind of getting endlessly lost in this thing that does this and does this. And but there is such a simplicity and a simple joy in just plugging in a guitar straight to an amp and a good sounding amp or, you know, just one you’re familiar with even. There’s a magic in that simplicity. So, even though these days I’m surrounded by a lot of gear, you know, when I’m just kind of mentally turning off and playing to have fun, it’s just a guitar straight in and that’s it, you know, and that’s just so unbeatable.

Simon

So, when you record, do you go straight into the desk or do you actually mic up your Fender?

TJ

Great question.

So, as of the when I was getting started doing all the home recording, I was living in apartments in New York. So, you couldn’t really have live sound. A few of the records that I did were mic’d up Deluxe Reverb. But then for the past few years, it’s been kind of just direct.

So, I have a stereo Neve DI where the guitar rig basically breaks into stereo once it hits like a couple of delay pedals. So, then I go stereo into my UAD Apollos and then from there, I’ve been using various amp emulations and simulators. So, I’ve been using like a Fuchs ODS and then what else have I been using? Just recently found this company called Nimbrini that does virtual guitar amps and cabs, but they allow you to load in third party impulse responses.

And that for me was like a whole new game of being like, oh, wow, maybe I don’t need a cab in my room because the impulse responses I got are from a company called Solo Dallas and they mic’d up with vintage mics and nice gear and nice compressors and a great desk. And if you throw those impulse responses into the Nimbrini stuff, I’m just kind of like, oh, wow, okay. This does the trick. Plus, it’s easy recall. If you put it on your laptop or you do play live, you can kind of get your sound anywhere. The sound engineers and everything live, you’re all kind of at the mercy of how well they can mic you and how it can sound. But then also just for ease, I go a lot direct just so I can kind of, if I ever want to re-amp something or feed the clean signal through something else, it’s there and that’s kind of helpful. I don’t think I’ve ever done it, but it’s just nice to have the option and it’s so much quicker, I think, than kind of setting it up. So I’ve gotten spoiled in that regard and certainly need to dust off the muscle of actually the art of mic’ing a guitar amp.

Simon

Sure. Sure. Well, your guitar sounds great anyway from what I was listening to yesterday.

TJ

Oh, thank you.

Simon

So, certainly on the ambient work that you were doing, it’s sort of, it is beautiful. I noticed you were, is that a Fender Jaguar you were using?

TJ

That’s a Jazzmaster, actually.

Simon

Jazzmaster, right. And that’s your go-to guitar, is it? Or is it still using the Gretch?

TJ

So, it became my go-to. I was always, it seemed to kind of be a Fender person. I have Gibson’s and the Gretsch and I love them for so many things, but whenever I gigged, I was always grabbing the one that would be the most reliable, which was oftentimes the Fender Strat.

So, I have a 2000 Strat that I put vintage noiseless pickups in and I don’t know that guitar, like you could and I have kind of like thrown it down and it’ll just come right back into tune. It’s just your buddy. So, then when I discovered the world of Jazzmasters and namely, like Nels Klein and Wilco, I kind of lusted after them. And I just got this one. It’s like a Mexican-made Jazzmaster that I got in Manhattan when I was living there and I put pickups in it from, actually, I think from the UK.

This company called The Creamery and he hand-wines pickups. So, I got a pair of those put in and I swapped out volume and tone pots and put mastery bridge on it. So, just like really decked the guitar out because it was almost like buying a fixer-upper home. It was kind of like the guitar was so well within reasonable budget. I was able to spend a little bit of money on the components and so, yes, it’s a long way around saying that it is kind of my number one these days just because it never fails, it never lets me down and it’s so versatile too.

Simon

Sure. Well, it sounds great. So, you sort of moved from there into the ambient world, I guess. Was there a particular point which, you know, was there a particular point of inspiration, I guess, that sort of, you know, we talked a lot about guitars and the normal sort of rock and roll, these sort of stuff, you know, and then there seems to be this sort of massive divide between that and the ambient work that you’re doing. I’m fascinated to know how that came about.

TJ

Yeah, effect pedals. Okay, that was it. Yeah, it’s kind of as simple as that. I had a very classic college experience in that like I discovered the world of Pink Floyd and fish and Grateful Dead and, you know, large in part fuelled by smoking marijuana with your friends. But when music seemed to get more spacious in that way and there was communication subliminally between members and all of this stuff in the jam band world, it was very intrigued by that, which led me into really the world of delay pedals.

And the one that really like did it, that took me from playing on stage, perform songs in bands, vocals, all of this thing to a longer instrumental ambient world that I’m in now was the Earthquaker Devices Avalanche Run. And that pedal, which just is, it was a whole universe of sound, it’s a delay plus a reverb. And you can kind of cascade the delay into the reverb and it creates this really spacious otherworldly sound. And so I had just been, I bought the pedal and I plugged it straight in and was recording one day. And I spent probably, you know, an hour and a half just noodling and I had recorded it as is like, you know, always record is my ethos.

And I sent it to a friend because I was like, hey, you’ve got to hear this pedal. This thing is so cool. Here’s just me kind of messing around with it. And he was the one that was like, you should release this stuff. And I was like, that’s not a thing like that, that nobody listens to just instrumental ambient guitar like this. And I was very wrong. People do. And like, you know, then I discovered kind of the world of classic ambient Brian Eno and Harold Budd and Paul Horn. And that led me to cluster, which led me to tangerine dream, which led me to visible cloaks, like all of these really phenomenally talented and just worlds of sound. And that that was just it, like the floodgates were completely open. And that’s all I wanted to do. And I found a way to bridge the two worlds by using guitar effects and guitar in a lot of ways, as the basis of these pieces that I then kind of write and compose into more instrumental ambient meditative, soundscapey soundtrack type of material.

Simon

Wow, that’s a fantastic story. So I guess, if you’re able to tell me, what does the future hold? Are there any projects in the pipeline or, you know, directions that you’re thinking of moving into?

TJ

Yeah, yes, there are. I so I last year, I signed a record deal with a Canadian music label called Network Music Group. And so they signed my project Six Missing On. And we’ve, we’ve released a few releases under them. And we have quite a few coming that I’m excited about.

So we have some singles for the new record starting in October. And then we have one planned for New Year’s Day has been my tradition over the last like three, four New Year’s is I’ve done, just to drop to a single that’s meant for kind of intention setting versus resolutions on the New Year’s Day. Okay. Because I personally feel like resolutions are you can negotiate with yourself a little bit out of it. But if you set an intention to do something, I think there’s a different weight to it.

And so my whole thinking was kind of like provide a little soundtrack for someone to sit and listen on New Year’s Day and kind of just think a little bit reflect back on your past year, look ahead on your year coming up and set some intentions. So we have that coming up for 2025.

And then constantly writing, constantly writing and experimenting. And, you know, it I don’t know what the next thing will be because I don’t really plan in that way. I just kind of follow the sound and let it inform where I’m going to go. And sometimes I sit down with an intention to do something or a direction and, you know, nine times out of 10 for me, it’s it doesn’t it doesn’t land. It doesn’t work. So when I start stepping out of that of trying to make something happen and just letting something happen. That’s where the magic comes in.

And that’s why like I can never get tired of doing this. And why Six Missing has so much material over a shorter period of time is just going with it. But my hope would be that I could kind of bring back in the guitar in a way that introduces it kind of in a way that that brought me into this this ambient space. So kind of coming a little more like full circle with it if I can, that’s the that’s the hope at least. It sounds excellent.

Simon

I must ask you, is Six Missing a collaboration or is that yourself, like your brand?

TJ

Exactly, it’s just me. Okay. I do a lot of collaborative work with other artists. But it’s always like the artist that I am is Six Missing and their artist is theirs. So it is a solo project for all intents and purposes.

Simon

Okay, well, I wish you luck. I know you won’t need it.

TJ

Oh, thank you. That’s very kind.

Simon

That’s been brilliant, TJ. Thank you.

TJ

Thank you so much for doing this. I mean, I could, you know, endlessly sit and chat about music and gear and process and all of that. So this was just a blast to do it. And thank you so much for having me on. It was lovely, lovely meeting you. And it was great chatting with Hannah as well. So thank you.

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